Team Vodafone’s Jamie Whincup has secured pole position for the first race of this weekend’s Trading Post Perth Challenge at Barbagallo Raceway.

The former V8 Supercars champion led the way with a scintillating lap time of 56.0734 seconds in this morning’s 20-minute qualifying session, while Will Davison hauled his Ford Falcon around the circuit just 0.2 seconds slower to deny Team Vodafone a 1-2 on the grid for this afternoon’s race – Craig Lowndes was bumped to third place, but over half a second slower than his team-mate.

Video highlights from today’s qualifying session

Qualifying times are usually extremely close at Barbagallo Raceway, and just half a second covered P3 to P24 on the 28-car grid. The order was perhaps a little more jumbled than usual, and local boy Karl Reindler put in a career-best performance to qualify sixth-fastest.

Defending series champion James Courtney qualified seventh-fastest, while his TOLL Holden Racing Team team-mate Garth Tander had a rotten qualifying session on his home track, twice running off the circuit during the session on the way to a woeful 23rd place on the grid.

The first 50-lap race of the Trading Post Perth Challenge starts at 2.05pm local time (4.05pm AEST) today.